Steamed fish with ginger and shallots
Steam a whole fish with a handful of thin matchsticks of ginger on top of the fish, and once the fish is cooked (the flesh should begin to flake) sprinkle the fish with 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and 4 tablespoons chopped shallots. Then heat 2 tablespoons of peanut oil until smoking hot, and pour this over the fish. Serve with rice.
Mashed potatoes with shallots
Peel and cut up 2 or 3 potatoes (Sebagos or Pontiacs) then put on to boil for 20 minutes, as usual for mashing. While the spuds cook, chop up the green ends of shallots (allow 1 per spud) into little rounds about a quarter of an inch (3-4mm) long. Toss the shallots into a saucepan with about half a cup of milk and let it gently heat through for five minutes or so.
When it gets to mashing time, use the milk and shallots instead of butter. Add in a good grinding of black pepper, and just keep on adding milk and mashing until it’s the right consistency. The shallots make it look interesting and they taste really great.
Tips on preparing shallots
Wash them, then slip of any papery outer skins. You can use the whole plant, even the roots. The roots actually have the strongest flavour. Asian cooks use everything, but European cooks rarely use the roots.
Use shallots in:
Salads, cut into 1 or 2 inch lengths
Stir fries, also in 1 or 2 inch lengths
Asian-style soups, 1 or 2 inch lengths
Omelettes – they go well with eggs, if you cook them a bit first
They go well with seafood, pork or chicken.
You can even use a whole one as a basting brush for barbecues. Just cut a few slits in the white end to turn it into a brush and then brush on your marinade. Nice bit of extra flavour!
They don’t keep so well in the fridge, but they keep incredibly well outside, in the garden. Just leave them there until you need them.
Grow your own!
It’s the same advantage with shallots as you have with growing your own herbs: at the shops you have to buy a whole bunch, when you only need a couple of plants. Growing your own, you can just pick one or two or three as needed, and leave the rest in the ground. The crop that I have is all ready to go now, and it’s been ready to go for about 4 weeks now. I’ve also got the next crop started, and they won’t be ready for another four or five weeks. So I’ll rarely ever have to buy a bunch again.
Their flavour does get stronger as they get older, so your young ones will be mild, and the older ones will be stronger-flavoured
Not bad value growing your own. A punnet of seedlings is around $3.50 -$4.00, and you’d get about 20-30 plants from that. A packet of seeds is even cheaper, around $2.50, and if every seed sprouted that’s give you 100 plants. A bunch of shallots at the supermarket is about $1.75 – $2
But the big thing is the convenience, as well as the lack of wastage caused by buying too many each time.